Adult Probation Department Research & Statistics

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a well-established talk therapy model that teaches people cognitive skills to help shift their thinking process. It focuses on a person’s ability to identify their emotions, understand how their emotions affect their thoughts and understand how their thoughts affect their actions. Research on CBT in the community corrections space has shown that CBT is an effective model to address criminal thinking and recidivism. Between 2020-2023, CCAPD’s research team conducted interviews with participants in these two programs to explore how they help participants internalize the aims of CBT.

Once participants begin to open up and buy in, they begin to develop what internal researchers have identified as wellness capital. Wellness capital is a collection of skills, relationships and resources that support personal and relational wellbeing and quality of life improvements, including freedom from further criminal legal system involvement. Through engagement with the positive environment, participants said they developed personal, social, and community benefits such as self-belief, self-control, empathy and hope. For people in the program, having facilitators familiar with the court process was helpful because they could offer more understanding and support with any court-mandated demands. Read more about the qualitative review of CBT programming here.

Problem-solving courts (PSCs), also known as specialty courts, are non-adversarial courts which seek to help criminal defendants suffering from an underlying mental health, social or substance abuse problem avoid committing new offenses. In Cook County, the first problem-solving court programs were established in 1998. There are now 20 PSCs across Cook County’s six municipal districts: seven adult drug treatment courts, seven adult mental health treatment courts, and six veterans’ treatment courts. All PSCs in Cook County operate under very specific evidence-based and risk-needs-responsivity models and target high risk/high needs individuals charged with non-violent felony offenses. The three types of problem-solving courts serve different purposes and target individuals with differing risks and needs.

In 2023, the Department completed a recidivism study examining both the short-term program outcomes and the longer-term desistance patterns of participants in Cook County’s PSCs. Outcomes were examined for a sample of 3,345 cases that were admitted to the County’s Problem-Solving Courts between the years of 2010-2019. Recidivism was defined in four ways: re-arrest for a new criminal offense while on PSC probation, conviction for a new arrest while on PSC probation, re-arrest for a new criminal offense within three years of termination from PSC probation, and conviction for a new arrest within three years of termination from PSC probation. Read more about the PSC recidivism analysis here.

Established in 2018 across Illinois, the First Time Weapon Offense Program (FTWOP) allows courts to sentence eligible individuals, with the consent of the defendant and the State, to the FTWOP. Successful completion of the program results in dismissal of charges, avoiding a felony conviction on the person’s record (Drumm, A., & Powers M., 2023). Initially, only 18-20 year-olds with qualifying UUW charges who had no prior violent conviction were eligible to participate in the FTWOP. The age restriction on FTWOP eligibility was lifted in mid-2023, expanding access to all individuals who meet qualification criteria. The FTWOP is operated by the Adult Probation Department, and at this time does not offer specific, targeted programming.

In March 2023, APD conducted an outcome analysis, comparing participants in the FTWOP to a matched group of individuals similar to the FTWOP population in key ways. Samples for this analysis consisted of 505 individuals who were sentenced to the FTWOP in 2018 and 2019, and a comparison group of 491 individuals aged 18-20 who were sentenced to probation on a UUW charge prior to 2018. While this analysis is not a program evaluation, it does compare recidivism rates of FTWOP participants with a comparison group, in effect examining whether the promise of forgiving charges upon successful program completion has any deterrent effect on recidivism. Read more about the FTWOP recidivism analysis here.

Using a sample of pretrial cases closed between September 2022 and August 2023, APD’s Research Team conducted a comparative analysis of its standard pretrial supervision program, its pretrial curfew program and the Sheriff’s electronic home monitoring program. Over the timeframe of analysis, we examined outcomes for 6,398 standard pretrial supervision cases, 840 pretrial curfew cases, and 3,463 Sheriff’s EM cases. The outcomes we analyzed include appearance rates, public safety rates, and overall success rates.

The demographic breakdown of individuals ordered to each program was mostly consistent across programs, with some differences. About 88% of individuals ordered to standard pretrial supervision were male, 70% were Black, and the average age was 34. About 92% of individuals ordered to a pretrial curfew were male and 72% were Black, though these individuals tended to be younger (average age of 29). Finally, 92% of individuals ordered to the Sheriff’s EM program were male, 74% were Black, and the average age was 32. The breakdown of charge type differed for individuals ordered to each program. Individuals on standard pretrial supervision were most frequently (31%) charged with drug offenses; individuals on a pretrial curfew were most frequently (45%) charged with weapons offenses; and individuals on the Sheriff’s EM program were most frequently (32%) charged with weapons offenses. Read more about this comparative analysis here.

As part of the department's partnership with Cook County Health on the federal government's Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program (COSSUP), the department worked with data from the Cook County Medical Examiner to identify opioid-related deaths of people on probation. Researchers used a novel matching algorithm to match records between APD and the Medical Examiner, then examined risk factors associated with elevated risk for overdose death.

The study found that people on probation were over 15 times more likely to die of an opioid overdose than people in the general population of Cook County. Almost 90% of these overdose deaths involved fentanyl. Risk factors include being over age 45 and having a history of substance use generally, and opioid use specifically. The department has worked on strategies to address this high rate of overdose deaths, including making naloxone available at all reporting locations. This study was published in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment and can be found here.

In 2022, the department worked with partners from Cook County Health and the Medical Research Analytics and Informatics Alliance to match probation records with gun homicide death records from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. The main goal of the partnership was to develop a baseline rate of gun homicide deaths for people on probation to support operational and grant application activities. APD submitted a hashed roster of 53,964 unique individuals who had been active on probation during 2018 through 2021. These hashed records were matched to 306 hashed records of gun homicide deaths in the CCME data.

Preliminary analysis indicated that the rate of gun homicide deaths per 100,000 probation clients is 567. This is almost 22 times higher than the overall gun homicide rate for the City of Chicago in 2020, which was 25 gun-related homicide deaths per 100,000 population, and almost 33 times higher than the gun-related homicide rate for Cook County in 2020, which was 17 deaths per 100,000. Read more about this preliminary analysis here.